Friday, October 28, 2016

Vladimir Putin
took part in the final session of the Valdai International
Discussion Club’s 13th annual meeting, which this year took the theme The Future
in Progress: Shaping the World of Tomorrow.

October 27, 2016

20:00

Sochi

Over
the three-day event, 130 experts and political analysts from 35
countries examined current issues concerning development of international
relations, internal political organisation, the economy, demography,
and technology.

The participants
looked, in particular, at ways to mitigate the consequences
of radical changes on the global political map
and the crisis in democratic systems and their work,
and discussed development roads for Russia-EU relations and what
the global system might look like in 10 years’ time.

The final
session was also attended by former President of Finland Tarja
Halonen, former President of Austria Heinz Fischer, and former
President of South Africa Thabo Mbeki.

* * *

Timothy Colton: Good
afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.

My name is
Timothy Colton. I know quite a few of the people
in the room, and I am very happy to have been asked
to moderate this final session of our 2016 “Big Valdai” as we
call it.

I’d like
to start with a special welcome to our lead-off speaker, our
main speaker this afternoon, that is, of course, the President
of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin, who has taken the time
to come here and participate. We know how busy he is. We also
appreciate as always his willingness to entertain questions.
At some point, Mr Putin, when you’re retired and writing your
memoirs, you may want to sit down and calculate how many hours you’ve
spent answering people’s questions. Just for this group alone, it’s
already high, and I know you do it in other fora as well.
We deeply appreciate that. So thank you for coming.

Putin takes part in Valdai club's final session LIVE UPDATES

Russian President Vladimir Putin is discussing global challenges and Russia’s place in a dramatically-changing world with experts of the Valdai club at its annual session in Sochi.

27 October 2016

16:53 GMT

Question: Do you think that further development of the Russian economy requires an overhaul of the political system? And a second question: do you think anti-American nuclear rhetoric on a Russian state channel is appropriate?

16:48 GMT

Putin: Everyone wants to defuse geopolitical tensions. But it should be done by obliterating us, should it?

They only act at the expense of our interests. They state a position they like and only work on making us accept it.

Anti-Russian sanctions would still be there without Crimea or Ukraine. They would have found other pretexts to target Russia.

Foreign
Minister Sergey Lavrov’s speech and answers to questions at the meeting with
representatives of the Association of European Businesses (AEB), Moscow, October
25, 2016

1969-25-10-2016

As a poet
once said: “Frost and sun – a wondrous day.” But we will try to focus on our
work. First of all, I’d like to thank Mr Thomas Staertzel and all members of
the AEB in Russia for this opportunity to speak again to this audience. Our
regular contacts have become a good tradition that we want to support in every
way.

Today
business circles or business diplomacy play a special role in maintaining trust
and mutual understanding between nations. We know about your striving to build
up mutually beneficial cooperation and continue to work actively in the Russian
market. We know that you understand that confrontation and the logic of
sanctions are counterproductive. We appreciate and share this approach.

Regrettably,
the situation in the world has not become any simpler since our last meeting.
The region of the Middle East and North Africa continues bleeding. Syria, Iraq,
Yemen and Libya are engulfed in the flames of war. The unprecedented upsurge of
terrorism and extremism is particularly dangerous for all of us. Numerous acts
of terror in the most different parts of the world, and the refugee flow that
has swept Europe show that it is impossible to create “security oases” and to
cordon off threats and challenges. They are common for all of us and we must
deal with them together.

The
current situation, which is far from being optimistic, to put it mildly, is a
direct consequence of the pernicious practices of geopolitical engineering,
interference in the internal affairs of sovereign states and regime change for
objectionable governments, sometimes by force. We are sincerely disappointed
that after the end of the Cold War the United States and some of its allies did
not give up the archaic policy of deterrence. We are deeply concerned over
actions that affect Russia’s national security, such as NATO’s steps to draw
its military infrastructure and military presence closer to our borders and the
deployment of the missile defence system in Europe and Asia.

United States – reformation or fracture?

by Thierry Meyssan

Observing the US presidential electoral campaign, Thierry Meyssan analyses the resurgence of an old and weighty conflict of civilisation. Hillary Clinton has just declared that this election is not about programmes, but about the question «Who are the Americans?». It was not for reasons of his political prgramme that the Republican leaders have withdrawn their support from their candidate, Donald Trump, but because of his personal behaviour. According to Thierry Meyssan, until now, the United States was composed of migrants from different horizons who accepted to submit to the ideology of a particular community . This is the model which is in the process of breaking down, at the risk of shattering the country itself.

During the year of the US electoral campaign that we have just weathered, the rhetoric has profoundly changed, and an unexpected rift has appeared between the two camps. If, in the beginning, the candidates spoke about subjects which were genuinely political (such as the sharing of wealth or national security), today they are mostly talking about sex and money. It is this dialogue, and not the political questions, which has caused the explosion of the Republican party – whose main leaders have withdrawn their support from their candidate - and which is recomposing the political chess-board, awakening an ancient cleavage of civilisation. On one side, Mrs. Clinton is working to appear politically correct, while on the other, «The Donald» is blowing the hypocrisy of the ex-«First Lady» to smithereens.

On
October 20, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov will meet with Russian and foreign
participants in the international conference “Middle East: Trends and
Prospects” organised by the Yevgeny Primakov Centre for Foreign
Policy Cooperation jointly with the Alexander Gorchakov Public Diplomacy Fund
and the Russian Academy of Sciences Institute of Oriental Studies.

The
participants plan to discuss developments in the Middle East and North Africa
with an emphasis on the situation in Syria, Iraq, Libya and Yemen, as well as
on the Middle East settlement.

Following negotiations
on a settlement in Ukraine and the situation around
Syria, the Russian President made a statement
for the press.

October 20, 2016

02:20 Berlin

Click upon cc to obtain subtitles in English.President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Good
evening, colleagues, ladies and gentlemen.

I would like to say a couple
of words regarding the agreements reached with my colleagues.

First on the Minsk Agreements: all
the participants in today's meeting agreed that
a settlement in south-eastern Ukraine should be based
on the Minsk Agreements and we all confirmed our commitment
to these agreements.

We devoted a great deal of attention
to security matters and agreed on a range of issues
regarding further immediate actions to resolve the situation with
disengaging the conflicting sides. We agreed to continue searching
for locations where these efforts can be continued. In two locations
the disengagement has already taken place. We confirmed our readiness
to expand the OSCE mission
in the disengagement zone and in locations where heavy
equipment is stored.

We confirmed that we will continue our joint
efforts on the political track, including those directed
at reaching final endorsement on the procedure
for implementing the agreement on the special status
of certain areas in Lugansk and Donetsk regions,
in the Lugansk People’s Republic and the Donetsk People’s
Republic.

We also agreed on certain – only
some, unfortunately – humanitarian matters. Regrettably, we did not make
much progress here, though we did express our readiness to resolve
humanitarian issues. Here progress was probably minimal, because this is mainly
linked to arranging social payments and benefits. Unfortunately, no
progress has been made here. This was the first part of our meeting.

The second matter, discussed with
our European – German and French – colleagues dealt with the situation
around Syria and Syrian settlement in general.

2 of 3

Statement for the press following
visit to Berlin.

I informed our European partners
of our view on the developments there and on what
needs to be done immediately to fight terrorism, to root out
terrorism on Syrian soil, to make sure this hotbed does not flare up
again in the future, and, of course, what should be done
to ensure that our efforts lead to a final settlement. Primarily
we spoke of the political component in this process.

I reminded our colleagues yet again that
Russia suggests stepping up efforts to develop and adopt a new
constitution, on the basis of which preliminary elections could
be held and a preliminary agreement could be reached between all
the conflicting parties. This would naturally have to involve all
the countries in the region drawn into the process.

We also informed them of our intention,
the intention of the Russian side to extend the pause
in air strikes for as long as possible, based
on the actual situation in the area. We are ready
to do this until the rebel groups in Aleppo step up their
activities.

We also expect our partners, primarily our
American partners, to do everything they have promised so far
to disengage the Jabhat al-Nusra terrorists and similar
terrorist groups from the so-called healthy opposition, so we can see what
we need to do next together.

This is generally what our discussions today
were about and what we have managed to agree on.

Now I think it is time for you too
to go home and get some rest. That you very much for your joint
efforts.

Thursday, October 20, 2016

With just a little over 2 weeks before the presidential election, Hillary Clinton is pulling out all the stops to keep Julian Assange’s mouth shut. With no success at actually killing him, her minions did the next best thing by cutting off his internet at the embassy several days ago. Unfortunately for Hillary, a damning list has just been released, highlighting the things she’s done against the very country she seeks to lead.

The last couple of weeks of Wikileaks’ data dumps have placed a very disturbing spotlight on the inner workings of Hillary and her crooked campaign. From voter fraud to accepting bribes from terrorists, the list of infractions against our country is just insane at this point. While it’s difficult to weed through the thousands of emails to find the important stuff, the following is a list of the 13 most damning emails that show straight-up acts of treason on Hillary Clinton’s part, as nicely constructed by Conservative Byte:

Leaked private speech transcript shows Clinton’s warm ties to Wall Street’s most powerful figures: Clinton: “There is such a bias against people who have led successful and/or complicated lives” The pressure on officials to sell or divest assets in order to serve, she added, had become “very onerous and unnecessary”:https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/927#efmDEMDKk

Leaked private speech to Goldman Sachs, Clinton: “Wall Street was only accountable for the financial crisis for political reasons. The blame placed on the United States banking system for the crisis “could have been avoided in terms of both misunderstanding and really politicizing what happened”:https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/927#efmA2YA5Q

assange

At midday on Friday 5 February, 2016 Julian Assange, John Jones QC, Melinda Taylor, Jennifer Robinson and Baltasar Garzon will be speaking at a press conference at the Frontline Club on the decision made by the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention on the Assange case.